A Tahiti of The Mind

 

With my eyes open

 I absorbed everything

as a sponge absorbs liquid.

                            --Henri Matisse

 

I.

 

Swallow cut

one day from

writing paper. 

Throw away

such a lovely

shape? 

No.

 

Pinned to

the wall

it can cover

this stain that

so disturbs me.

 

More birds then.

Fish.  Coral.  Leaves. 

Up on the wall

they go.

 

As if my memory

had suddenly

taken the place

of the outside

world. 

 

What outcome

will there be?

 

II.

 

Sixteen years ago,

swimming every

day in the lagoon,

that submarine

world of wonders.

 

The light of the

Pacific a deep

golden goblet.

 

Feeling such

intense pleasure

contemplating

sea, sun, sky.

 

Reveries only now

returned to me,

with tenderness

and clarity.

 

Oceania, the sea.

Oceania, the sky.

 

Above The Chemin Des Lauves

 

I am the primitive of the

method I have invented.

                           --Paul Cézanne

 

Think.  Feel.  See. 

I stand and scrutinize

Mont Ste. Victoire. 

My favorite motif?   

Perhaps.  Forever

there yet never

quite the same 

each time I stare.

 

Here on this hill

I need only move

my head a mere half

inch for the entire

composition, total

landscape to be 

utterly transformed.

 

How then to render

mes petites sensations:

each dimension,

every nuance of

this fickle peak yet

at the same time

glimpses, inklings of

its timeless form?

 

Cubes, triangles,

squares.  By simple

means I find solidity. 

Reconstitute what 

nature offers, each

imprint it makes.

 

My language not

verbal but pictorial. 

My parts of speech

inarticulate figures,

soundless shapes.

Syntax striving to

evoke an essence

embedded in stone.

 

See.  Feel.  Think. 

Squares.  Triangles.  

Cubes.  Interknitting

intricate geometries.

Shrinking landscape.

Building up space

until (at last) no light

is seeping through. 

 

In The Chapel

 

Mark Rothko

 

the painting is

the experience

you can’t ever

wholly possess

without being

the painter

 

or maybe you

can maybe

if you look

and look and

look and look

 

eventually

perhaps you

may see what

the painter saw

if you wish

to penetrate

the mystery

cease to see it

as a mystery

  

at the heart of

the puzzle is

yet another

puzzle or

the same

perhaps

 

whatever you do

don’t do anything

you won’t regret

otherwise you may

never understand

 

in the chapel

it may well be

crucial to remain

perfectly still

or imperfectly

 

turn around

and around

stop and stop

and stop as

you go along

 

a ghost stands

behind each

canvas or

before it

depending

on your

position

 

don’t leave

until you

can’t stay

another

minute

 

or go

right

no

Sea After Sunset

 

This sea was painted very late in the day,

when it was already rather dark . . .

I saw it being born from the darkness.

                                    -- Albert van den Briel

 

Intellect confuses intuition.

                                                 --Piet Mondrian

 

My environment conditioned me

to paint objects.  Even at times

create likenesses, portraits.

 

But nature inspires an urge to . . .

make something.  Why should

I paint what any eye can see? 

 

I want to come as close as I can

to truth, then abstract each object

till I reach the foundation of things.

 

Masculine and feminine, vertical

and horizontal.  Everything

expressed through relationships. 

 

Each position, dimension, hue given

its true value.  Those colored planes

conveying not forms but affiliations.

 

I was always a realist.  Figurative

equals Natural Realism.  Non-

figurative equals Abstract Realism. 

 

Reality manifests itself as constant

and objective.  Independent of us.

Yet changeable in space and time.

 

We do not possess any definite

image of the real.  Its reflection

muddled, snarled inside our minds. 

 

The spiritual opposes the actual.

To approach a sacred state, make

as little use of reality as you can.

 

The feeling of beauty at all

times remains obscured

by an object’s appearance. 

 

Images are veiled truths.

Objects, therefore, must be

eliminated from the picture.

 

Very quiet here in Zeeland. 

Good for working.  I paint mostly

in the dunes, completely alone. 

No Words

 

Painting is its own language,

. . . not translatable into words

                                --Francis Bacon

 

No words for what I do.

For what are words?

And for that matter

what do I do? 

 

What’s all this talk of figure, ground

when walls are curvilinear corrals,

appendages bend unnaturally,

surfaces blend unfathomably,

and triptychs mirror

what’s not there?

 

What, then, are words

but puffs of air?

 

But paint, now, paint’s another thing.

And canvas, unprimed, soaks it in

 and holds it tight and won’t let go. 

 

There’s language for you.

Paint as speech and

brushes tongues,

and in your head

acuities no word

can hope to tell.

 

Intent, you gaze, and read each trace

of all that might be happening

or trying to happen

as you go. 

 

You know—and don’t—

what you’re about.

 

You change what’s there
yet all remains beneath

each alteration made

by stroke and

scrape and

strategy. 

 

You see, at least eventually,

what you have made,

what every gesture

means, or meant.

 

If someone dares to say

Please, please explain,

you say: Look! Look!

That’s what I mean.

 

And choose to say no more

except perhaps reluctantly

imposing on your

painting one

indignity:

a title. 

 

Words, words, words. 

They always bring

it back around

to language,

speech.

 

And although nothing’s

ever certain meanings

nonetheless accrete,

accumulate,

abound.

© 2026, all poems by John Mnaghan
This is part of an unpublished book project